Well, we missed / lost a couple of people largely due to my failure at organization, but overall I thought yesterday evening went quite well. Hope to see some of you again at Picocon, and maybe some of you who weren't able to make yesterday's event as well!

About the standard "popular science" level. If you follow science stories on sites like io9, you probably won't learn anything groundbreaking, but the interactive and social element still makes for a worthwhile experience.

I will almost definitely be there. Am up for meeting during the day if anyone else is about. Could get food in-between museum closing and re-opening times; plenty of good places nearby. Imperial College's sci-fi library is also practically next door, and all but guaranteed to be open in the afternoo...

I'm in the London area and would be very much up for going to a Science Museum late. Another event that may be of interest to London-based forumites is Picocon . Definitely come if you're into speculative fiction (Charles Stross is speaking this year!), but come anyway even if you're not, because it...

Crap. This is what I get for not checking this thread as often as I used to. In my defence, I probably wouldn't have been able to make it anyway... but any chance of another meetup soon? It being that time of year when students are finishing exams etc., methinks as much celebration as possible is in...

Hey guys. I do indeed check this thread from time to time. Hope you all enjoyed the meetup this weekend. It looked amazing - I couldn't make it as Philippa isn't really into that sort of thing, but I'd love to have a meetup over the Picocon weekend. If anyone's interested, it's in two weeks' time. I...

As I've mentioned before, I've been considering the possibility for a while now, for a number of reasons that I'm perfectly willing to go into with anyone who feels like emailing me. For those of you who don't, many of my reasons are similar to Number3Pencils' (in fact, feel free to merge if you thi...

Yeah, that's been mentioned above a couple of times. My most painful encounter with a stinging organism involved a sea urchin. The little bastard was (I assume) dark-coloured, and hidden in the shadows of some smallish rocks which formed a boundary that you had to cross to reach even moderately deep...

I'd say a combination of the song and the fact that it is "highest-ranking" are responsible for A♠; the Alice in Wonderland reference combined with the nursery rhyme are responsible for Q♥; and the fact that it is the "lowest-ranking" is responsible for A♣. My guess is that you d...

First, I'd appreciate it if you divided the quote into sections and put your replies under each section, so I could see which parts you were replying to. Falsification only applies to what is out there, the statement: “what is objective, absolute truth can only be falsified” – ITSELF CANNOT BE FALIS...

Many people on these forums would argue that in order to be objective, absolute truths need to be falsifiable and have scientific evidence cannot be held true by your own standard. Really? You could create a poll and ask them. That counts as falsifiability, and if a sufficiently large number of peo...

VannA has already raised the issue of citation, so I'll address some other points: you cannot trust studies either Oh. We'd better abandon science then. I haven't seen the details of the study you mention, but I would imagine that the scientists concerned would make it clear in their paper that they...

I suspect that, due to the random nature of the initially-dealt single pixels, from a distance the mosaic is always going to end up looking like white noise - unless perhaps the same 3x3 units etc. are used multiple times.

Lets be fair though, truth doesn't need to be proven. Truth just is. Personal beliefs and ethics on the other hand are perspective and subjective. I apologise if this has already been addressed, but why are 'ethics' merely a matter of subjectivity? I don't think there is anything 'subjective' with ...

A few anecdotal stories about wasps and their cousins, bees and ants: When I was in primary school, or possibly soon after starting at secondary school, I went on a trip with my family to Crystal Palace Gardens to see, among other things, the model dinosaurs they have there from the 19th century. An...

I'd say it does in this case. The only "benefit" for male circumcision is that some ignorant girls and guys seem to think that uncut penises are "gross!" A superficial argument like that could be and has been used in defense of female circumcision. You seem to be confusing &quot...

I just walk lots. I don't drive, and it's rare for me to be able to get a lift places, so I probably average a few miles a day during the majority of the year when I'm doing stuff. I know that's not a great deal, but it's better than nothing.

Yes, though only at isolated points (in this case, at a single point). When you say "infinite slope", you actually mean that the derivative, where it exists, goes to infinity as that point is approached. This definition only really makes sense for isolated points - actually, you might be a...

I would definitely support the idea of a separate subforum if it looked like enough people were interested. It's just that, so far, there have only been a handful of threads on the subject. When most of the subforums were created, there tended to be a fair number of threads which already belonged in...

Also, even in the abstract sense it need not refer to black holes. The "singularity" at the centre of a black hole is just one example of a singularity of a function. That's not the only problematic synonym in this thread, either. The world wide web is not the same thing as the Internet, a...